protoplanetary disk
Seeing the Moment Planets Start to Form
Nature makes few duplicates, and planets are as distinct from one another as snowflakes are. But planets all start out…
Clumps Around a Young Star Could Eventually Turn Into Planets Like Jupiter
New images from the European Southern Observatory show a young star surrounded by dusty clumps that could collapse and create…
Astronomers Directly Image Debris Disk and find a Jupiter-Sized Planet Orbiting a Sunlike Star
The SHINE collaboration recently observed a Super-Jupiter within a young debris orbiting a nearby star. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); M. Weiss…
Ceres Probably Formed Farther out in the Solar System and Migrated Inward
When Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi spotted Ceres in 1801, he thought it was a planet. Astronomers didn't know about asteroids…
Astronomers See the Wreckage Where Planets Crashed Into Each Other in a Distant Star System
Our Solar System was born in chaos. Collisions shaped and built the Earth and the other planets, and even delivered…
Even More Complex Organic Molecules Have Been Found in a Protoplanetary Disc. Was Life Inevitable?
Will we ever understand life's origins? Will we ever be able to put our finger on the exact moment and…
A Star Passed too Close and Tore Out a Chunk of a Protoplanetary Disk
When it comes to observing protoplanetary disks, the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) is probably the champion. ALMA was the…
Rings in the Early Solar System Kept our Planet From Becoming a Super-Earth
A team led by Rice University has created a new model of planetary formation that answer how the Solar System…
This is How You Get Moons. An Earth-Sized World Just got Pummeled by Something Huge.
Titanic collisions are the norm in young solar systems. Earth's Moon was the result of one of those collisions when…
The Early Solar System Had a Gap Where the Asteroid Belt is Today
Wind the cosmic clock back a few billion years and our Solar System looked much different than it does today.…